Still, he selects four to describe himself: passionate, genuine, blunt and sympathetic. The exercise has long pauses and lasts 35 seconds, so he might have chosen methodical, too. But he didn't.

DeMaio avoids labels, but lately he has had to shrug off one in particular. His critics are comparing him to polarizing former San Diego City Attorney Michael Aguirre, whose attempts to roll back city employee benefits earned him praise and scorn.

Like Aguirre, DeMaio is a vocal critic of pension benefits who has issued a series of reports condemning them. Also similarly, DeMaio is a rare voice still saying San Diego is on the brink of bankruptcy.

DeMaio rejects the comparison with Aguirre, who lost re-election last year. DeMaio says he attacks the problem, not the people.

“I think the culture at City Hall is to apply labels, and some people who don't want to make changes would rather distract attention by creating a boogeyman,” DeMaio said.

Aguirre didn't return phone calls for this story. But in 2005, he said city officials – instead of discrediting then-citizen DeMaio and his research – should give DeMaio credit for trying to fix San Diego's budget problems.

“His research isn't any more flawed than the city's,” Aguirre said then.

DeMaio made a mint preaching government efficiency at three private companies he founded in his 20s, then he made his first run for office look easy. At 33, he beat a guy twice his age by a 2-to-1 margin last June after knocking on 15,873 doors. He counted.

Now, his Web site proudly points out that “DeMaio made history as a non-incumbent taking a Council seat by the widest margin in a primary.” And he boasts that he is the first council member in 24 years elected without the support of at least one city labor union.

“We did some research,” he said.

His hit-the-ground-sprinting approach has resulted in about 1,500 friends on Facebook – and what is best described as a built-in foe base in organized labor.

His assertiveness at council meetings has prompted his colleagues at times to try to silence him on procedural grounds, and most wouldn't talk about him for this story.

On Tuesday, the task of reining in DeMaio will fall to former Councilman Michael Zucchet, now a consultant with the largest city union, the Municipal Employees Association. The two will be on opposite sides at a forum on public pensions.

“If a council member's goal was to generate concessions from union members, I can think of a lot of ways to really get that done, but one of them would not be to constantly attack and disparage those employees and to throw out so-called facts that are later proven to be dead wrong,” Zucchet said.

Lorena Gonzalez, head of the San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council, said of DeMaio, “He's kind of like Mike Aguirre without the endearing personality.”

But developer Doug Manchester, an enemy to labor and friend to DeMaio, said DeMaio “tells it like it is, and he doesn't back down, which is very refreshing in the world of politics.”

T.J. Zane, executive director of the pro-business Lincoln Club of San Diego County, said the Aguirre comparison is a labor strategy to influence public perception during union contract negotiations.

“If you can silence your loudest critic, the other critics become background noise,” Zane said.

Anti-tax activist Richard Rider, who lives in DeMaio's council district and donated money to his campaign, is impressed by his backbone but sees a downside.

“Being able to bend without breaking from a political standpoint is probably a better attribute,” Rider said. “Carl doesn't have that.”

Among his colleagues, only Councilman Kevin Faulconer, who with DeMaio makes up a two-man GOP council minority, agreed to an interview for this story. Faulconer described DeMaio's style as “high-energy, and high-energy.”

Unlike many San Diego politicians, DeMaio's roots in the city are not deep.

A middle child, he was born in Iowa to two teachers and attended a Catholic military school in Anaheim. At age 15, he severed ties with his father two weeks before his mother died of breast cancer. He studied international politics at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., and wound up a research fellow with the Reason Foundation, a proponent of privatizing public jobs.

He opened a San Diego office for one of his companies early this decade and in 2004 began publicly proposing ways to fix the city's budget problems. He organized budget forums with city officials and community leaders, then watched as prominent sponsors pulled out over concerns about DeMaio's aggressive approach and some of his analysis.

Labor leaders still use that episode against him. They mention it on a Web site, dirtydemaio.com, and have criticized him further for “fuzzy math.”

DeMaio said he expected the criticism. Often, he tries to bypass it by taking his talking points directly to voters and the media.

He posts his calendar online for all to see. It shows that by 8 a.m. on the day he was sworn into office, he had already done three TV interviews. Later, he did not use Christmas morning as an excuse to miss a weekly radio appearance.

While DeMaio seeks out as much (or more) media attention than the mayor, he was silent on statewide Proposition 8, which ended the rights of gays to marry last year. He said he considers his view “private and personal.”

At the same time, he has seen the movie “Milk,” about pioneering gay San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk, three times and displays a biography of Milk in his City Hall office. Still, DeMaio said social issues won't distract him from pressing financial issues.

“I think a lot of people in politics spread themselves way too thin,” he said. “They try taking on everything, and that's not my philosophy whatsoever. I'm taking on the city's financial health.”

DeMaio won't say what his long-term political ambitions are, though others suggest he may run for mayor in 2012 or seek state office. What's clear is he has wanted a career in politics for two decades, since he was 14 and said so to a reporter at The Orange County Register.

The drama as DeMaio gets settled in at City Hall is, will it change him or will he change it?

There's been at least one retreat already. During his campaign, DeMaio said he would station his office headquarters in Scripps Ranch to stay close to his constituents. Now, he and his staff work mostly at City Hall but hold office hours in Scripps Ranch on Fridays.

DeMaio also plans to do something in his district he said no council office has ever done after an election. He said he and some staffers will keep knocking on all the doors in District 5, as he did in his campaign.

“As it says on my wall,” he said, motioning to a poster behind him, “ 'Don't drink the Kool-Aid.' ”